School Board Members and Superintendents:

It was great to see and talk with so many of you at the Leadership Conference last week. We always learn so much from our conversations and hope you enjoyed the roundtables, workshops and speakers.
Grace Keliher provided a legislative update Thursday morning.  Many of you requested an electronic copy of her presentation so you can find it here. 

Last week
The four education committees met for mostly committee rule review and introductions of both members and education stakeholders.
Monday the Senate E-12 Finance committee met for an overview and discussion of some major components of growth in E-12 Finance.
The House Education Finance meeting provided an overview of Minnesota Education Finance System by House Research Staff and House Fiscal staff.
Remember this year, the Senate has two education committees, the Senate E-12 Education Policy and Senate E-12 Finance committee. The E-12 Finance committee heard from Mark Haveman, Executive Director, Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence on Wednesday on Implications of Cost Trends for State Education Aid.      

This week
The House Education Innovation Policy committee will receive an update on the Legislative Study Group on Educator Licensing Report. House Education Finance will receive an overview of early childhood education issues and a MDE presentation on implementation of voluntary pre-K pilot program.
If you are interested in watching either of these, please click on the House TV/Video link to the left for the scheduled meeting.

In national education news, Secretary of Education nominee, Betsy DeVos will begin confirmation hearings  in the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Tuesday, January 17 at 5 pm. This hearing was originally scheduled for January 11 but was delayed a week.  Click the link to watch the live feed. 

Each week new bills will be highlighted in this section as well as updates on the bills that have been heard.  As the session progresses, we will provide updates from the conference committees. When there is a hearing on a significant bill, we will also try and provide links to the video so you can watch with us.

H. F. 84, A bill for an act relating to pupil transportation; requiring seat belts on newly purchased school buses.

H. F. 97, A bill for an act relating to education; integrating service-learning into Minnesota's education system; establishing an evidence-based service-learning grant program; appropriating money.

H. F. 136 & S.F. 65, Bills for an act relating to state government; providing for zero-based budgeting.

H. F. 140, A bill for an act relating to education; directing the commissioner of education to plan for restructuring Minnesota's teacher licensure system.

H. F. 149, A bill for an act relating to education finance; establishing a working group to review progress on Minnesota's school finance reform efforts.

H. F. 181, A bill for an act relating to education finance; creating a new source of state aid for school districts with low general education revenue per pupil and low property wealth per pupil.

S.F. No. 62: A bill for an act relating to education; modifying the calculation of special education aid; increasing school district basic revenue; indexing basic revenue to inflation; authorizing a school district to renew an expiring referendum by action of the school board.

with any questions. 

Broadband for Kids 12 Greater Minnesota School Districts - The $500,000 in funds that were appropriated during the 2016 Legislative Session was enough to help 12 Greater Minnesota school districts provide better access to high-speed Internet for their students. 

Sincerely,

Your Government Relations Team
Grace Keliher
Denise Dittrich
Kimberley Lewis